Tourism Resilience and Coastal Rights: Q3 2001 After September

Briefing

• September 11 attacks caused immediate collapse in US tourist bookings for Jamaica.
• Tourism industry sought emergency government support as arrivals projections fell.
• North coast development projects reassessed as investor confidence faltered.
• Community advocates noted brief window where access debate pressure had eased.
• Environmental assessments continued on pre-committed development applications.

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States arrived at a moment when Jamaica’s north coast tourism and development sector was in the middle of a sustained expansion phase. Resort bookings were strong, development applications were flowing through the system, and investor confidence in the Jamaican tourism market was at a level not seen since the early 1990s. Within days of the attacks, the picture changed substantially. American tourists cancelled or declined to book travel. Airlines adjusted routes. The projection for the remainder of 2001 and the first half of 2002 was revised sharply downward.

The tourism industry’s response was to seek government support for a period of market disruption that was externally caused and therefore, in the industry’s framing, a legitimate subject for state intervention. The Jamaica Tourist Board adjusted its marketing programmes to emphasise resilience and value. Resort operators negotiated revised arrangements with airlines and tour operators. The development projects that had been advancing toward financing decisions were reassessed: some were put on hold pending clarity about the demand trajectory; others were maintained on the basis that the disruption would be temporary and that a project developed over a multi-year construction timeline would open into a recovered market.

The Accidental Pause

Community advocates monitoring coastal access issues noted, without taking comfort from the circumstances that produced it, that the pace of new resort development proposals temporarily eased in the months after September 11. Applications that had been imminent were deferred. Projects that had been moving toward construction starts were delayed. The temporary reduction in development pressure was an involuntary pause in a process that advocates had been seeking to slow through advocacy and legal challenge. It was not a resolution of any of the structural issues: the access enforcement deficit, the EIA backlog, the lack of systematic compliance monitoring. It was simply a pause, caused by external shock, that would end when confidence returned.

The pause did not last long. By late 2001 and into 2002, investor interest in Jamaican tourism was reasserting itself, and the development pipeline began moving again. The window in which the coastal development debate might have been resolved differently — if the pause had been used to reform the institutional arrangements rather than simply wait for the disruption to pass — was not used for that purpose.

Related: Property Market Analysis | Jamaica Tourist Board

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